Notes on a Near-Life Experience

by Olivia Birdsall

  Later, Mom kept talking about how if the bee had stung Allen's eardrum, he could have gone deaf in one ear. I thought I had saved his life, the words deaf and death sounded so alike to me. Back then, it was that easy to rescue somebody, to make things right.

  ALLEN AND I ARE DRIVING TO LISZ'S, TEN MINUTES LATE because we had to push-start his car. “Have you decided who you're going to take to prom yet?”

  “Prom? Meeze, are you kidding?”

  “C'mon, you're supposed to go with me and Julian.”

  “Well, then I guess I do know who I'm taking to prom—

  you and Julian.” “You know what I mean.” “Right. Okay. I do not have a date to prom, nor do I have any desire to find one.” “Well, I was thinking you could take Haley to prom. She's hot, and you're taller than she is.” “She is somewhat hot, and I am slightly taller than she is.” “So what's the problem?”

  “Okay, Mimoo, tell you what, do me a favor. Next time you see Haley, ask her if she'll go to prom with me.”

  “What?”

  “Just ask her if she wants to go with me.”

  “You can't be serious. You want me to ask her for you? Are you crazy?”

  “What's the big deal? You see her more than I do. It'd be weird for me to call her, because I never call her unless it's to ask her to send you home.”

  “I am not. Going to ask. Haley. To go. To prom. With you.”

  “Fine. Well, will you at least tell her to call me?”

  “Why is this such a big deal? Why are you being such a wuss?”

  “Because you're the one who wants me to ask her, so why don't you just do it for me?”

  “Whatever.”

  “I'll think about asking her, okay?”

  We are silent for a while. I watch cars pass and try to think about prom dresses, but I still feel uneasy.

  I get tired of the tension and blurt out, “You never told me what happened the other morning. When you didn't wake up on time. You were drunk, right? Or hungover?” I keep looking out the window as I say this; I'm afraid to look at Allen's face.

  He sighs. “Look, it's no big deal. Don't worry about it.”

  “Julian said that you—” I begin, turning away from the window to look at him, but he interrupts.

  “So you and Julian sit around talking about me now?” His face is white; he stares straight ahead, gripping the wheel like

  he's trying to strangle it.

  “Forget it.”

  “No, really.” He looks over at me briefly, his face pained. “I am interested to know what my best friend and my little sister have been saying about me. Julian can't come over without you hanging all over him, and I can't just show up at his house anymore, because who knows if you'll be there or not.”

  “C'mon. That's not how things are.”

  “Right.”

  Silence again. We don't speak until we pull into the parking lot of Lisz's office building.

  “Do you talk to Lisz about it?” I ask.

  “Jeez, Mia. About what?”

  “Drinking.”

  “Do you talk to Lisz about your shit? The way you go around acting like there's nothing weird going on in our house? You think that by keeping your mouth shut and not saying anything and pretending that the most important things in the world are Julian and your stupid prom you can erase the fact that Dad walked out on us and Mom acts like she can't stand to be around us anymore?”

  I hop down from the car without saying anything and rush into the office. I realize as I walk through the glass doors that I forgot to close the car door.

  THE PAPER IN MY HAND READS: THE MOST INTERESTING THING about you!

  “There isn't one!” I want to say. But I don't.

  I've tried to figure out ways to tell Lisz about myself, to see what she has to say, without telling her it's me. You know, like one of those “I have this friend who …” stories, but everyone always knows who those are really about. I've also considered telling her a really awful story about “a friend” and seeing how she reacts, whether she thinks I'm talking about myself.

  “Do you ever get bored?” I ask. I like to surprise her.

  “Bored? No. Why?”

  “It just seems like everyone probably has the same kinds of problems. So I just thought that maybe you got tired of hearing about them all the time.”

  “What kind of problems do you assume everyone would have?”

  “Things like divorce, depression, drug addiction…I don't know. It seems like everyone has different problems maybe, but they all come out of the same basic things.”

  “That's very insightful. What do you think is at the root of most problems, then, Mia?”

  “I think people are scared.”

  “What do you think they are scared of?”

  “Of not being good enough, of not being liked or loved or understood.”

  Lisz picks up a pen and writes something in her notebook. I look at her and then at the notebook to make sure she knows I know what she's doing.

  “Do you have those fears, too?”

  “Sure. I mean, everyone does.”

  “Mia, that's an incredible insight. Knowing things like that, understanding what motivates us to turn to unhealthy habits and ways of coping, should really help you to deal with the conflicts that arise in your life.” She seems excited.

  I wonder why she's acting like I just told her my deepest, darkest secrets. I need to proceed with caution. “Okay.”

  “Do you think your parents' separation has influenced the way you view yourself and the way others see you?”

  “I don't know. But I'm not on drugs or anything and I'm not depressed, either, so probably not.” I know I'm lying, but come on, do I really have to spell everything out? Say it out loud in all its embarrassing glory? The thought of digging everything out makes me tired and sad. I think about what Allen said to me about ignoring things, trying to erase them.

  “I don't want to push too hard here, Mia, but I think there is something going on. You seem very defensive and set on revealing as little about yourself as possible. That tells me that you must be afraid of something. Something besides dying in a fire. I think there's something going on inside you that you are not ready or willing to deal with.”

  I don't say anything. I wonder if I'm hiding more than I know; I wonder if I know things I don't think I do.

  I go through hypotheticals in my head. What if I did tell her everything I was really afraid of, everything I saw happening— Allen's drinking, Keatie's loneliness, Mom's working and never being home anymore, Dad's starting some new perfect life with a Peruvian slut. What's the worst that could happen?

  I could tell her everything and find out that it changes nothing. That there is no way to turn back, to undo, to erase. That there is no way out.

  That might be my greatest fear.

  IT WAS DAD'S IDEA TO TAKE US ALL TO KNOTT'S BERRY FARM with Paloma. At least, that's what Keatie said. Allen and I protest. “You want us to spend an entire Sunday with Dad and that lady?” he shouts. Allen hardly ever raises his voice at Keatie.

  “Dad says we can get funnel cake and go on Montezooma's Revenge as many times as we want!” Keatie acts as if this would be a good enough reason to undergo electroshock therapy, much less spend time with Dad and the Slut.

  We all end up going.

  Knott's Berry Farm is an amusement park that's set up to seem like some kind of western ghost town–farm. There are a few roller coasters, some other rides, and a section that's mostly for kids called Camp Snoopy.

  Before we've driven three minutes in the car, Keatie announces, “I'm not going to ride a single ride at Camp Snoopy. It's for babies.”

  “What about the airplanes? You love those. You like being the Red Baron,” I remind her.

  “Nope. Not anymore. I only like the big rides, huh, Allen?”

  “Sure thing,” he says listlessly. Since the morning I found him hungover, I've noticed that Allen seems much more moody than he was before. I t
hink he drinks more often than I want to know.

  Sometimes he's almost giddy, deliriously happy, like how he was a week or so ago when I found him, Julian, and Keatie watching tapes of a championship soccer game Allen played in a few years back. Other times he is sullen and angry, like the other day when he couldn't find Julian and he called me up looking for him. I wasn't even with Julian, but Allen still said, “Ease up on him, Mia. You're going to scare him off.”

  We let the subject of Camp Snoopy drop and ride to the amusement park in relative silence, except for the Peruvian flute music playing on the stereo and Keatie's occasional comments about how many roller coasters she's going to ride and how she isn't going to throw up even once.

  Once we get to Knott's, it doesn't take me long to realize that we're in for an interesting time. Keatie tries to hold Dad's hand whenever he and Paloma start to walk off by themselves. Allen must notice this, too, because pretty soon he's trying to hold Keatie's hand all the time and usually attempting to lead her in the opposite direction, away from Dad and Paloma.

  When everyone manages to agree on which ride to go on next, Paloma usually refuses to ride. “Ay, no. ¡Dios mio!”

  So the four of us ride together, yelling and putting our hands in the air to convince Keatie that we're having fun.

  About the eighth time my dad speaks to Paloma in Spanish to “translate” what we are saying (Paloma always laughs whenever Dad says anything—something we never do), Keatie gets upset.

  “Why do you always talk to her and not us?” she shouts. She sits down on a bench and puts her thumb in her mouth. Dad and Allen speak at the same time: “Keatie, get your thumb out of your mouth.”

  Keatie reluctantly removes her thumb and wipes it on her jeans.

  “Which ride do you want to go on next?” Dad asks, annoyed.

  “None,” says Keatie.

  “What?”

  “I don't want to go on any more rides. I want to go home.”

  “Are you sure?” Dad, Allen, and I ask at the same time.

  “Yes,” whimpers Keatie.

  So we leave.

  In the car, on the drive home, Keatie leans forward from the middle of the backseat and turns off the Peruvian flute music. We drive in silence the rest of the way home.

  KEATIE IS WATCHING HOME MOVIES AGAIN, BUT THIS TIME SHE watches the tape that shows Mom when she was pregnant with her.

  Dad pans the camera down Mom's body and zooms in and out when he gets to her belly. “Wow,” he says, “three months to go and you already look like you're going to pop any minute.”

  The camera pans up to show Mom rolling her eyes. “Thanks, Russ. Thanks a lot. That's just what I need to hear.”

  The camera focuses on the door, and I walk in sucking my thumb. I forgot that when my mom told us she was pregnant, I started sucking my thumb again.

  “Thumb out of mouth, Meems, or we'll sing the song,” Dad says from behind the camera.

  I also forgot that my father's way of trying to get me to stop was to sing a song about a girl named Mia who sucked her thumb so much that her lips fell off.

  “Hey,” he says as he pans the camera between Mom and me, “Mama…Mia… Mama…Mia…”

  I take my thumb out of my mouth. “Can't you sing the thumbsucking song instead of that?” I ask him. I also forgot how much I hated the Mama Mia thing…. I start to miss it while watching the video. Not really the Mama Mia chant, I guess, but the way we used to do things, the way there were things I could count on, even if they bugged me.

  “I want the baby to stay inside of Mommy,” I say, and put my thumb back in my mouth.

  Keatie stops the tape and looks at me.

  “I was six,” I tell her. “I'm glad you came out.”

  Keatie puts her thumb in her mouth, picks up the remote with her free hand, and turns off the video.

  IT'S 10:39 P.M. I OPEN MY HISTORY BOOK. I'M SUPPOSED TO read two chapters by tomorrow and write a list of questions about the end-of-chapter questions. Mr. Bingler is determined to get us to “question what the textbook wants us to believe about America,” so instead of answering the damn questions at the end of the chapter, we have to come up with new ones.

  The phone rings.

  It's Haley. “Let's sneak into the Olympus Lakes pool.”

  “Can't. History homework.”

  “I already did it. I'll tell you what's in the chapters on the way over and we can do your questions on the way back.”

  Yeah, it's cheating; yeah, Haley's a straight-A student with a perfect academic record; and yeah, we've done this a million times over the years. Sometimes I read and report, sometimes Haley does.

  Her justification: “It's ethical because we're really just supposed to learn the material; the way we learn it doesn't matter, as long as we learn it.”

  “Okay. Just us, or should I invite Al and Julian?”

  “Just us. It's been a while.”

  Haley flashes her brights, our signal. My parents'—I guess my mom's now—bedroom faces the backyard, and my bedroom window is visible from the driveway, so when we were younger, Haley used to shine a flashlight in my window to signal that she was there. That was before we all had cell phones, back when my parents would have cared that I was leaving the house at night without their permission. I like that Haley still does it the old way, that to her it's still natural to use our signal, that she's even adjusted it so that she can use her car to do it. It's nice that there are things between us that haven't faded or been lost.

  “I love that you still do that,” I tell her as I get in the car.

  “What?”

  “Flash your lights. You could just call. The way things are now, you could probably honk your horn.” And even if anyone was home, they'd probably be too drunk or too preoccupied to notice, I think.

  “Huh.” She wrinkles her brow. “I've never really thought about it. Habit.”

  “So why the sudden urge to sneak into the pool?”

  “The moon was full, my homework was done, and I missed you.”

  I crane my neck out the window and look up at the moon, a perfect white disc hanging in the blue-black sky. “Thanks.”

  “No, no, thank you for coming. So, let's get the history over with and then we'll talk. He's got us doing the Industrial Revolution and the civil rights movement….”

  “What?” Mr. Bingler has a habit of jumping around a lot and having us study two completely different periods of history at once. He seems to think he's teaching us these deep, profound lessons about history by doing this. But I usually don't get it. “Why would he put those two together?”

  “It's kind of interesting….” Haley talks fast, and by thetime we get to the entrance to Olympus Lakes, she's pretty much finished her synopsis. She types a number into the keypad at the security gate and it opens.

  Olympus Lakes is a housing development surrounded by man-made lakes on two sides and a golf course on the other two. It was built when I was in fourth grade. In true yuppie fashion, the development has a Greco-Roman theme; most of the homes have columns, and all the streets are named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Navigating through the place is always a treat. “So I turn left on Adonis?” “No, you go past Adonis and Aphrodite to Jupiter, and it's left on Jupiter.”

  A bunch of new kids moved in and came to our school when it was completed, and my friend Ana, who's on the dance team with me, was one of them. The first time I went over to her house, she took me to the community's clubhouse, which has a huge swimming pool with waterfalls, natural-rock waterslides, three diving boards that are all different heights, and several hot tubs shaded by tropical plants. I was astounded. Back then, everyone else's pools had a deep end, a shallow end, and, if you were lucky, a diving board and/or a hot tub. Haley and I have been sneaking into Olympus Lakes ever since. Now, of course, tons of people have upgraded their pools so that they look like Amazonian lakes, but I still love sneaking in here, although we hardly ever do it anymore.

  We skinny-d
ip because it feels more dangerous, but we only do it when we're sure no one else is around. When I hear about the wild things other girls do, flashing their chests at Mardi Gras, snorting coke at parties, I realize that I am a total dork. But I have to admit, I still feel like a rebel when I skinny-dip in this pool.

  Haley and I scale the fence, throw our towels on some plastic lounge chairs, and strip down. We cannonball into the pool, as always, and when we surface, we swim around for a few minutes.

  “It's to cold to stay in here long. Let's get in the Jacuzzi,” she says, shivering.

  “I want to swim a little longer,” I tell her.

  Haley gets out of the pool and goes to the hot tub, turning on the jets before she gets in. I paddle around the pool a few more times, float on my back for a while, and notice how small my breasts look when I lie on my back. After I am convinced that there is no getting around the fact that they are hopeless, that I will never be featured on a Girls Gone Wild video, I get out of the pool and walk over to the Jacuzzi.

  As soon as I sit down, Haley blurts out, “Your brother called me up at two O'clock in the morning last night to ask me to the prom.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I think he was on something.”

  I wonder if she means that he wasn't just drunk, but high, too. I almost ask, but I worry that Haley won't want to go to the prom with us if she finds out how Allen's been acting lately. “Very funny.”

  “No, I'm serious.”

  I avoid looking at her. “He was probably just nervous. What did you say?”

  “I told him I'd get back to him…. He wasn't just nervous, either.” She waits for me to look at her, but I play with the bubbles from the jets instead and pretend that I have no idea what she's getting at.